# crake
## English
### Alternative forms

* Crake

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈkɹeɪk/
* Audio (Southern England):(file)
* Rhymes: -eɪk

### Etymology 1

From Middle English crak, crake, from Old Norse kráka (“crow”), from Proto-Germanic *krak-, *kra- (“to croak, caw”), from Proto-Indo-European *gerh₂-, itself onomatopoeic.

#### Noun

crake (plural crakes)
* Any of several birds of the family Rallidae that have short bills.

##### Derived terms

* African crake (Crex egregia)
* Andaman crake (Rallina canningi)
* Ascension crake
* ash-throated crake
* Baillon's crake (Porzana pusilla)
* banded crake
* black crake
* brown crake (Amaurornis akool)
* Colombian crake (Neocrex colombianus)
* corncrake, corn crake, corn-crake (Crex crex)
* (as syn. of corncrake) cracker
* crakeberry (Empetrum spp.)
* Laysan crake (Porzana palmeri)
* ocellated crake (Micropygia schomburgkii)
* paint-billed crake (Neocrex erythrops)
* slaty-legged crake
* spotless crake (Zapornia tabuensis
* spotted crake (Porzana porzana)
* uniform crake (Amaurolimnas concolor)
* water crake (Porzana porzana; Cinclus spp.; Rallus aquaticus)

##### Translations
#### Verb

crake (third-person singular simple present crakes, present participle craking, simple past and past participle craked)
* To cry out harshly and loudly, like a crake.
** 1854 October, “MIDNIGHT IN JULY”, in The Kerry Magazine: A Monthly Journal of Antiquities, Polite Literature, Poetry, volume 1, number 10, page 159:How still ! how very still it is, So silent it appears, E'en from its intensity, To tingle in mine ears. I hear the sheep-bell far away In the calm breathless night; The corncrake begins to crake . Crake, crake, with all its might.
** 1872, Bertha E. Wright, Marvels from nature; or, A second visit to aunt Bessie, page 175:'How very disagreeable!' said Annie; 'perhaps the birds took it in turn to crake.'
** 1951, The Listener - Volume 46, page 90:Of course, a corncrake, as its name suggests, likes to crake among the corn and hayfields, so that in fact you are unlikely ever to confuse it with the spotted crake, a bird to which dry land is almost anathema.

### Etymology 2

From Middle English craken, from Old English cracian, from Proto-West Germanic *krakōn, from Proto-Germanic *krakōną.
Cognate with Saterland Frisian kroakje, West Frisian kreakje, Dutch kraken, Low German kraken, French craquer (< Germanic), German krachen.

#### Verb

crake (third-person singular simple present crakes, present participle craking, simple past and past participle craked)
* (obsolete) To boast; to speak loudly and boastfully.
** 1526, The Hundred Merry Tales; Or, Shakespeare's Jest Book:I hyred the to fyght agaynste Alexander, and not to crake and prate.
** 1559, The Mirror for Magistrates:Each man may crake of that which was his own.
** 1600, Phaer's Virgil:With him I threatned to be quite, and great things did I crake.
** 1721, John Strype, Ecclesiastical memorials:And he that thus doth shal have smal pleasure in his awn rightwysnes, nor no gret lust to crake of his awn deserts or meryts.

##### Derived terms

* craker

#### Noun

crake (plural crakes)
* (obsolete) A crack; a boast.

### Anagrams

* Acker, Kacer, acker, creak